Hours after the United States government filed a lawsuit seeking to punish the publication of my new memoir, #PermanentRecord, the very book the government does not want you to read just became the #1 best-selling book in the world. It is available wherever fine books are sold.
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Yesterday, the government sued the publisher of #PermanentRecord for—not kidding—printing it without giving the CIA and NSA a change to erase details of their classified crimes from the manuscript. Today, it is the best-selling book in the world:
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In recent interviews, I've gotten questions over if or how I use a smartphone. They're so dangerous for someone like me, so it's quite difficult to give an in-depth answer. But I published a paper with a few years ago discussing some risks:
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Phone security has been something I've struggled with for a long time. I once spoke with 's about how it's possible to physically remove internal microphones and cameras from a phone, but even that only mitigates a portion of the threat.
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But as long as your phone is turned on, even with "location permissions" disabled, the radios in the phone that connect it to all the nice things you like are screaming into the air, reporting your presence to nearby cell towers, which then create records that are kept forever.
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Software is equally important. The iOS and Android operating systems that run on nearly every smartphone conceal uncountable numbers of programming flaws, known as security vulnerabilities, that mean common apps like iMessage or web browsers become dangerous: you can be hacked.
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If I were configuring a smartphone today, I'd use 's as the base operating system. I'd desolder the microphones and keep the radios (cellular, wifi, and bluetooth) turned off when I didn't need them. I would route traffic through the network.
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You should get into smartphone design... Imagine a phone with switches that physically disconnected sensors.
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Replying to @TEC1_1 @2linuxorg and 2 others
It's not open hardware / firmware. The claim is untrue. I don't want to keep being roped into these threads and you already got a reluctant answer from me on the same thing. I certainly don't recommend it and I think you already know that. It's less private / secure, not more.
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They didn't say that though. There are some things to point out about the approach to sensors and the fact that the device is inherently insecure and unable to be properly updated since they've inherently prevented firmware security updates and proper isolation though.
Also, the closed modem module (that connects to the sim) should not be trusted